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richardhutnik on 17 January 2011
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badgenome said:
richardhutnik said:

In what I wrote, I was looking at, first, that there are people out there whose paranoia of the government is such that it looks like it is increasingly detached from reality.  There are reasons to be concerned about things, but it looks liek a detachment.  Beyond this, it looks like it is becoming increasingly trendy to pander to this.  What happened last administration was that people who had "9/11 was an inside job" weren't pandered to by the media, or politicians.  But now, we get everything else as pandered?  And this is a thrust of what I am talking about.  You have a political candidate saying that, if the current congress continues to do what what it has been, people will look for second amendment remedies?  In short, they are going to get their guns, stage a revolution, and start mowing down officials in the government?  These are Angle's own words. In the minds of people I speak to, Net Neutrality becomes the equivalent of the government rounding up people without arresy warrants and shipping them off to secret prisions.   And Net Neutrality also gets fused with the stupid law that congress passed to give the president of the United States a "kill-switch" on the Internet to combat China.  At a Tea Partty meeting I attended, both were blurred together as the same thing.

Anyhow, here is a clip that contains Angle's own words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU9GXil9Vm8

 

I guess it depends on what you consider to be pandering, but I definitely think you're either practicing selective memory or holding the Republicans to a much, much higher standard than you are the Democrats. Check out any number of sites that had people on the ground at anti-war rallies back in the day (I'd recommend zombietime). There was a surfeit of loony shit being promoted at those things. Not only 9/11 conspiracies but out and out communism, a strain of anti-Zionism that smacked of straight up antisemitism, and of course, calls for violence against elected officials, particularly Bush. You also had prominent Democrats - among them our current president - speaking at these events, and it's funny, but I never heard of a single instance of one of these Democrats denouncing that sort of nonsense. You know, what Republicans are expected to do with the fringe elements of the Tea Party, whose worst excesses can't hold a candle to those of the anti-war movement.

What makes the whole thing truly galling to me is the hypocrisy of a media which frets about whether or not we're reaching a dangerous boiling point today but completely ignored this utter insanity back then (see Christopher Hitchens dressing them down for their sanitization of Cindy Sheehan as only Christopher Hitchens can). And actually, there's not only a Bush era vs. Obama era discrepancy in terms of media coverage, either. Every questionable sign at a tea party rally throws the whole enterprise into question and stands as a justification for the jaundiced eye with which the majority of the media perpetually views it. But when illegal immigrants and their boosters take to the streets by the thousands, waving foreign flags and using inflammatory, racist imagery? Why, you won't hear a peep. Probably because too many people in too many newsrooms find it a cute reminder of their days at Berkeley doing the same sort of thing.

All I can say is you did it AGAIN!  You turn my attempt to express concerns I have had out of a person experience with one Tea Party meeting I have attended into more spin saying, "Yes, but dem liberals are WORSE and the blasted Liberal media is suppporting them!"  You are arguing with me here, not attempting to have a conversation.  You are once more, coming from a partisan mind view and trying to score debate points.  In this, I gave ground here, speaking of 9/11 conspiracy kooks.  You do NOTHING similar on your side here.  Am I to think you believe there is NOTHING on the right that is incorrect and inappropriate and it is ALL justified because liberals started it?  Am I to think you believe Anne Coulter is PERFECT in what she does, and she is RIGHT ON to talk about destroying the NY Times building?  What I am seeing from you now is a mind of a partisan for whom this discussion is a personal war you MUST win.  You have to be right, and ALL that is wrong has to be traced to everything that is liberal.  After all, liberal is not only supposed to be wrong, it is supposed to be EVIL.

All this reminds me of a scene from Cheers, where Sam Malone plays software against some Playboy Bunnies.  He played pure hardball with them, dusting them back and just downright aggressive.  The cost?   He didn't score with any of the Bunnies.  So, flat out, if you are merely going to use this discussion as a chance to score political points and prove that liberal side is responsible for every ill on the planet, then there is really nothing we have to discuss here.  Consider yourself to have won this debate, throw yourself a celebration party and do a victory dance.  Get a football and spike it there.  You won, yippie!  And as policy, America should round up all liberals and send them to reducation centers.  Or shoot, maybe shoot them all but two, and keep them around as living fossils, agreeing with Rush:

Rush Limbaugh: "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus--living fossils--s­­o we we'll never forget what these people stood for."”

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,163548,00.html

Wee, this finger pointing game is fun.  I think I scored a few points on the mythical "I am right, and you are not" scoreboard.